Reagan Control Tower Goes Silent, Planes Forced to Land Solo

Editor's Note:  Unmanned Control Towers? Naked Body Scanners and Intrusive Pat Downs are necessary but apparently the TSA doesn't consider airport controllers as important.  Do you still think the TSA is concerned about your safety?

PAT PAPERS-Pilots heard nothing but silence coming from Reagan Airport yesterday says the Washington Post. Two late-night flights were forced to land on their own after determining the control tower was unmanned. It’s still unclear where the air traffic controller on duty was, but one theory is that he got locked out.


Video: The air traffic control tower was unmanned at Reagan National Airport as an American Airlines pilot approached for a landing. (March 23)

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Man With 4th Amendment Written on Chest Sues Over Airport Arrest

Aaron Tobey/Government Image

David Kravets
Wired

A 21-year-old Virginia man who wrote an abbreviated version of the Fourth Amendment on his body and stripped to his shorts at an airport security screening area is demanding $250,000 in damages for being detained on a disorderly conduct charge.

Aaron Tobey claims in a civil rights lawsuit (.pdf)that in December he was handcuffed and held for about 90 minutes by the Transportation Security Administration at the Richmond International Airport after he began removing his clothing to display on his chest a magic-marker protest of airport security measures.

“Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated,” his chest and gut read.

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RELATED ARTICLE:
TSA Body Scanners Show 10X Higher Radiation Than Admitted
Jesse Ventura Sues TSA Over Body Scans, Pat Downs

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TSA to retest airport body scanners for radiation

Devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected

Wikimedia Commons

Alison Young and Blake Morrison
USA TODAY

The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation — 247 machines at 38 airports — after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

The TSA says that the records reflect math mistakes and that all the machines are safe. Indeed, even the highest readings listed on some of the records — the numbers that the TSA says were mistakes — appear to be many times less than what the agency says a person absorbs through one day of natural background radiation.

Even so, the TSA has ordered the new tests out of "an abundance of caution to reassure the public," spokesman Nicholas Kimball says. The tests will be finished by the end of the month, and the results will be released "as they are completed," the agency said on its website.

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RELATED ARTICLE:
Body scanners 'could give you cancer', warns expert

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